


(I Cant Wait To) Waste My Life Away With You

by bumblebee_rose



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Tiny bit of Angst, mostly learning things and laughing, post tour life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 04:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16758037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblebee_rose/pseuds/bumblebee_rose
Summary: Shes always been good at words, these ones just don't seem as easy to get out.orThe times he says I love you, the times she doesn't, the time he does for her, and the time she says it herself. Figuring life out is much easier when you choose the person you want to spend your forever with.





	(I Cant Wait To) Waste My Life Away With You

He’s always been better at talking than she has. Sure, she can spout adjectives and verbs like it’s nothing, sound out _idiosyncratic_ and _percolate_ and _penultimate_ like she’s at a spelling bee, they just don’t sound right outside of her head, don’t translate well into conversation. She talks like she writes, every single letter perfectly shaped between her teeth and lips, her "i’s" dotted like pointillism. 

He talks and it traces into her mind with a ballpoint pen, immediate and messy, smudged blue ink that never has time to dry, three words she thinks she’s said to him a million times on ice. 

Three words that just keep getting stuck in her throat. 

****

She doesn’t say it when he says it the first time. 

If she’s honest, she doesn’t even see his lips move, she might have thought she’d dreamed it if it weren’t for the fact that she felt it in her soul. 

The words just flow out of him and they feel like the touch of Midas on her skin, turning her to gold and paralyzing her all the same. She supposes he’s caught in the bliss they only create between the sheets, drunk on the feelings they’ve been harbouring for what feels like eons. 

But it’s so like him, the way he can lay his feelings out like a deck of cards and win the game in what seems like one round. How easily he can tell the moon’s deepest secrets like they’re nothing. He’s open in a way she wishes she could be, but feelings were just never as easy for her as they were for him. He was always better: at skating, at talking, at feelings, at friends.

She sleeps next to him that night, curled into his side with her leg between both of his while trying not to overthink. It’s not that she didn’t expect it, it was just the question of when it would actually happen. In 2013? His breath hot against her neck. In 2014? His hands wandering, caressing her every curve. All of the past season? Holding her like a flower, wrapping her so tightly in his arms and fixating on the pulse point in her neck. She never was good at time estimates, everything shes ever cooked can vouch for her.

It happened though and she knows it has something to do with the finality of it all being over, that they don’t have any obligation to be in each other’s lives anymore until they’re scheduled to paint on smiles and talk in front of a camera again. It has something to do with how scared they both are, even if neither of them say it aloud, but they share a mind, each other’s missing half, if she didn’t know better she would think they were born under the exact same stars. 

So no, she's not shocked, there was always some weird sort of gravity neither of them could explain that kept pulling them towards one another. Pulling her through step sequences and conferences and nights on his couch where his hand made her bare skin turn to goosebumps, pulling her all the way into bed with him, making him say things that made her heart beat in her chest. 

He told her those things in the shards of moonlight covering their naked shoulders, draping their cheekbones in white light. Whispered it into her hair when he thought she must have been asleep but God, she felt it. 

Felt his lips move against the top of her ear, as he clearly sounded out those three syllables before pressing a kiss to her hairline, and letting his breathing even out. It wasn’t meant for her to hear, but she did anyways, doesn’t think he would have minded if he knew she was listening. Stayed still as she felt an ice cold wave wash over her. _Of course he says it the first time they fall into bed together, of course_ Because Scott Moir is all passion and roses, dark lines and hazel eyes that she tells the press are brown, but the truth is she can’t quite explain the gold around his pupil and the green around the outside with bits of blue and the warm chocolate between all the spaces making her feel like home. 

She doesn’t ever talk about how she feels safest in his arms to them, how his rough hands, lined with tiny white scars from her skate blades, feel soft against her skin. She decides some things are just for them, files away the feeling of their legs intertwined together as one of those. 

He startles awake with no warning, eyes opening with a gasp as sits up breaking their bodies apart. 

“Tess?” he says, reaching out for her, a slight shake in his voice. She can hear his hand searching on the mattress, rustling the sheets, and knocking a throw pillow onto the floor. It finds hers in a few seconds because it always does; she was convinced for a while they had magnets embedded into their skin, opposite ends of both poles. 

His entire body sags as he melts back into the mattress and lets out a breath. She can see the furrow in his eyebrows, the tension in his shoulders, the way his chest rises and falls in pattern. Therapy breathing, she thinks. She lets him breathe for a minute, eyes closed, before she speaks up.

“I didn’t know you still got those,” she says a bit dumbly. She spent a month and a half on a bus with him, she should know these things. “The nightmares I mean.”

It’s like she can picture him as twelve again, walking through the hallways of her mother’s cottage with a blanket over his shoulders late at night. As twenty, showing up to the rink with purple circles under his eyes. Twenty four, answering the door with bleary eyes when she goes to wake him up, a blatant contrast to his usual early rising. She thought it was stress until his brother told her the truth in the back corner of a coffee shop when the only thing she could do for him was watch from afar. 

“Not usually,” he says, voice raspy and low “just.......sometimes.” He finishes, bringing his hands up to rub at his eyes

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks in a therapy sort of voice that she comes to find is automatic, because apparently they use therapy tactics in bed now. The same tone of voice JF used to make them imitate once a week when they fell into the grey couch in his office. Where she sat with her spine straight and her fingers in tangles on her leg, where he bounced his knee up and down, where they learned to talk to each other again.

“No.” He says softly “those aren’t.....no.” He finishes, letting out a breath as he turns to look at her. “You should go back to sleep though,” he mumbles, bringing up a hand to brush at the hair strewn over her pillowcase. “Early morning tomorrow I don’t want you to be tired.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him she hasn’t slept at all, has been worrying and thinking for hours, desperately trying to re-draw the line they blatantly washed over. Like they were ever good at that-She _is_ good at overthinking though, she even has a silver medal to prove it. 

“Are you going to sleep?” she asks instead of shutting him out, catches his hand and rolls over on her side to face him, toys with the top hem of his white shirt, and supposes she can leave the line ruined for a bit longer.

“Soon” he says, “maybe later.” 

“I can’t sleep if you’re not,” she mutters, bringing her eyes to his. “I can count sheep for you if you want?” 

“Count sheep?” he asks, a smile hinting at the corners of his lips, a tiny triumph in her mind. 

She shrugs. “Just a suggestion, it used to work back when....” but she doesn’t need to finish, they both remember sharing blankets and beds and pillows all their lives. 

“You know, I wouldn't mind that.” He smiles at her for real this time, glancing once seriously her way, silently asking permission before moving in closer and situating himself into the crook of her neck. Regardless of how many talk show games they’ve played, she’s never really thought about the fact that he knows every part of her before, knows every curve of her body with and now without clothes on, knows she’s scared of change, knows to give her time to reassess. 

Therapy, she thinks, helps out in the oddest of times. 

She counts for him, tangling her fingers in his hair and breathing him in, feeling it to the tips of her toes when he moves just slightly against her. 

She counts for him, one, two, three, four, five until all the numbers sound the same and she can feel him relax against her, fall back into sleep. 

She doesn’t say it that night, but somewhere inside she feels it. 

***

It takes a bit for her to get used to it all, the extra pair of shoes always by her door, his caramel coffee creamer in her fridge, his arm thrown over her when she wakes. 

If she’s honest though, she likes having him around more than she can admit. He trudges back downstairs to turn off the lights when she forgets, carries both of their skate bags to her front door, kisses her softly on the cheek when he sees her frowning at notes or comments on Instagram. 

She also cares a lot less than she thought she would. If he’s spotted ordering her chosen drink at some coffee house, then so be it. The Olympics are over, tour is over and she’s allowed to breathe, to do what she wants without having to own up to it like she’s sixteen. She knows perfectly well what she’s getting into, thank you very much. 

Twenty one years later and she finally realizes that she gets to keep a part of herself only for herself, and quite honestly, she really doesn’t give a damn what anyone else has to say. They’ve always been good at finding their bubble and this time it just happens to stick. 

He’s gotten to the point where he’s comfortable enough in her space to go bang around in her cabinets, to turn the TV loud and, most interestingly, do loads of laundry. His Under Armour spandex shirts mixed with her Adidas black ones, his fleece hoodies coming out of the dryer warm with her pale pink pullovers and wraps. He even changes the sheets when she asks, brings over some lemon scented something that makes her bedroom smell like spring. 

Sure, he picks up everything left on her floor for even five minutes and immediately throws it into the wash, leggings she could have worn two days in a row or a bra that didn’t need cleaning at that very moment, but she can’t complain too much, he does get the job done after all. 

She doesn’t worry about it really, she would hope, that at thirty one, he knows how to do a load of laundry without turning all her white blouses pink or something equally ridiculous. She doesn’t worry about it at all until she’s supposed to go out and meet her sister for lunch with concealer carefully dabbed onto her neck, and she can’t find one of her shirts. The nice one made of that silky fabric he loves that tarnishes easily, the one she left on her– 

She freezes. The one that needs special washing, that will surely be ruined if thrown in with regular clothes. 

“Scott!” She yells, taking two stairs at a time. “Scott did you take my floral shirt from the––” The words die in her throat when she gets to him, sees the confused look on his face. 

“The one with the lacy shoulders you left on the floor?” he asks, gesturing at his shoulders and walking towards the laundry room. “Yea I washed it, why?” 

“You did?” She moans. “That one was special you can’t just throw it in like a regular shirt.” She says running a hand through her hair. She’s reminded painfully of the time she went over to his apartment and found his best dress shirt soaking in the kitchen sink, and brings her hands down the side of her face. 

“Well duh,” he replies. “I turned it inside out and put it on delicate. I didn’t even heat dry it I just left it on the rack, I don’t have a death wish, Tess,” he says, shaking his head and smiling at her as he hands her the shirt, very much in one piece, looking new as ever. 

“Oh,” she says, letting her hands drop to her sides. “I didn’t think you knew about that stuff.” 

“I don’t, really. I just value my life,” he says, turning off the light and waking back up the stairs with her in his wake. “Also I like that shirt on you, looks nice,” he calls over his shoulder as he makes his way back to the couch. 

Everyone always asks if they’re a couple, if they’re dating, if they’re together, what exactly their "funny little relationship" entails. She never has an answer because all their relationship does is expand, makes room for new types of love she didn’t think she knew how to feel. 

New types of love that include him walking through her house bare-chested, folding her silk camisoles on the living room floor, and taking up a spot in her upstairs reading nook with the big window and comfy couch. 

It’s a bit new, and she’s a bit in love with it. 

******

There are plenty of things that don’t really belong to her; her heart, being a prime example.

Her heart has never fully been hers because some part of it has always belonged to him, Scott Moir with his loud words and louder actions. She doesn’t remember giving to to him, but rather thinks he simply just plucked it out of her chest one day. It makes sense though, he takes and she lets him, she steals his inhibitions and he leaves his hands open and empty. 

He leaves leaves water and a pill on her (their) bedside table (she thinks of things more and more as _theirs_ now) one morning, which she takes immediately upon waking up to soothe the cotton ball mixed with jackhammer feeling in her head.

when she trudges down the stairs she finds a note stuck to the kitchen counter from him saying that his mom asked him to help out at the rink for a bit during the morning and that he would likely be back by the early afternoon with _of course,_ he adds with three underlines, strawberries from the market and fresh whipped cream. 

She smiles as much as she can bear with the pounding behind her eyes that makes her really just want quiet and about seven more hours of sleep. Her mistake to let Scott drag her around the city after a sponsor event, asking bartenders to make her drinks from a “secret admirer” and twirling her on her toes in her too small Clark’s. 

She did have fun though, and at least she knows with certainty that even though she can’t remember everything that happened she didn’t go home with anyone but him. No, there’s no way she could mistake the smell of him in her sheets and the weight of his arm thrown over her waist as anyone else. It’s funny, she's able to recognize the way his hands feel on her thighs and ribs in a lift but now, she knows the way they feel in bed too. She’s always slept on planes slumped against his shoulder with her legs thrown over his, now he tucks his nose between her shoulder blades and tangles their legs together in a different way. 

A lot has changed, and it doesn’t help the pounding in her head to think about it, so she doesn’t. 

She tries to read but none of the words seem to stick, and she hates having to re-read paragraphs so she puts the book down in favour of wandering around her house. She always has the heating on full blast but somehow her house is still cold. Something that has to do with how the vents and ducts were laid out when it was built, she should really call someone to see if there’s anything that could be done. Sitting on the kitchen counter because she can, she picks up the note he left, reading it until she has it memorized. She’s never noticed the way he writes his capital “i’s” until now. The lines at the bottom and top slightly slanted instead of straight across. It’s funny, the things you only notice twenty one years later. 

She settles on a bath because no matter how many layers she packs on the heating in her house still sucks and she hates being cold. Slipping into the silk of the water topped with rose scented bubbles and bits of rosemary still floating at the surface from the bath bomb is what she thinks heaven must feel like. 

She doesn’t hear him coming in through the front door at all, doesn’t notice the scuffle of his boots on the front mat or the rustling of his coat as he shakes off bits of snow. The first time his presence actually registers is when he opens the door to the bathroom with a can of whipped cream in one hand and cut strawberries in a bowl in the other. 

“Hey.” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he sits down criss cross applesauce on the mat at the base of the tub. 

“Hi.” she says back, sinking down a bit further into the water. The open door brought in the cold with it and she’s been enjoying the steamed up bathroom far too much. The air had been getting heavier as time passed making her eyelids droopy and filling her nose with sweet smells. She’s lucky he walked in when he did, she might have fallen asleep if he didn’t and she knows the statistics of people drowning in bathtubs.

“I come bearing gifts,” He announces while folding his arms onto the edge of the tub and leaning his cheek on the back of one hand. “I thought you would have been at the front door waiting to take them and kick me back out” he jokes 

“You? Never.” She teases, wrinkling her nose as he blows on the peak of bubbles by her chest and causes some to settle in her eyebrows. 

He laughs when she brings a hand up to brush them away, forgetting that her own fingers are doused in foam and essentially covering her entire left eyebrow and cheek in soft could. 

She pouts at him, furrows her eyebrows and tilts her head to the side. 

“I’m sorry” he smiles, reaching for her himself to clean up the mess she’s made. “Peace offering?” he suggests when he’s done, holding up the bowl of strawberries. 

“I suppose.” She sings letting him feed her pieces of strawberry and opening her mouth wide for whipped cream. 

He alternates between feeding himself and her, his fingers stained pink from the strawberries and eyes glowing soft brown in the light from the window, talking about new things and old things and how his mothers plants are all dying. She laughs at all the right times, tells him about her sisters latest “life crisis” and brushes away pieces of hair that keep falling on his forehead. He talks with his entire body, always using his hands and chest and arms with every word while still somehow keeping voice low and soft, not straying too far from the calm of their little sanctuary. 

He misses her mouth by a mile on one of the many times she asks for whipped cream, letting it fall on her cheek instead and making her throw her head back in laughter. He licks it right off, making her squirm and ticking the side of her face, as he places a kiss at the corner of her eye. 

He pulls back only a bit before she places a hand under his chin and tips up his lips to hers, kissing him softly before parting only slightly. 

“You taste like strawberries.” She mumbles into his lips, keeping her eyes closed as he moves to place kisses along her her jaw, smiling as she feels his nose brush against her ear, and cradling the back of his head. It’s strangely intimate in a way she’s never felt before. His lips on her skin leaving sweet kisses that make her melt into him, his hair between her fingers thick and heavy like the warm air surrounding them. One of those moments where time stops. 

When he pulls away she reaches her arms out and sits up, smiles as he wraps her up in a fluffy towel and sweeps her into a simple hold with one arm on her back and the other under her knees, the first one they ever learned. Kissing her once on the nose, he deposits her under the covers before climbing in himself and pressing fully against her. 

“You smell nice.” He mumbles while wrapping her into his arms, pulling her so tightly against him that they feel like one. 

She thinks she could spend forever that way.

*****

They go grocery shopping together which is sickeningly domestic and a bit odd in the beginning but she gets used to it eventually.

It’s not like she’s much help really, staring at him blankly when he asks her to find cilantro or cumin, walking towards the canned food aisle when he asks aloud where she thinks fresh whole mushrooms are. He seems to like having her there though, hums as he pushes the cart between stands of apples and oranges, scratches avocado off a list when they’re nestled in a bag tied with a single knot at the bottom of her basket. 

He never fails to tease her either when she reaches for minute rice and microwave instant meals, he scrunches his nose, says it’s weird; she however thinks it’s convenient. 

“There’s nothing wrong with a quick meal when you’re in a hurry,” she protests weakly, eyeing the spices and fresh vegetables in the cart, and then the steamed broccoli container in the jumbo freezer covered in frost. 

“There’s also nothing wrong with using a stove,” he adds, raises an eyebrow as he firmly shuts the freezer door.

Her mother would always take her grocery shopping on Sunday mornings; they go Thursday nights. 

He says he likes walking around when there aren’t as many people, when he can compare plums for as long as she can stand and not block any other shoppers, where he can sit her in the basket and run as fast as he can down the aisles, narrowly missing pop up shelves and baskets of roasted nuts. They’re both tired from lack of sleep and a day at the rink and they might both be a little delirious but it’s the most fun she’s had in a while.

His laugh is clear and loud as he pulls them to a stop so that she can grab rice crackers from a shelf, only pausing a second before he whips them around the corner, nearly sending her toppling over. She thought skating was the only thing that made her feel like flying but getting pushed in the basket of a shopping cart at eight o’clock at night comes pretty damn close. 

There’s a worker in their teens who looks nervously at them before turning back to putting price labels on discounted items and he makes sure to slow down as he drives the cart past the kid, both of them plastering on fake faces of neutrality.

There’s something freeing about it all, not having an obligation to anyone or anything, being able to act like they’re sixteen and eighteen again and not having the first thought in her head be about what she can’t do because of skating.

They can be immature and reckless in a grocery store and it really doesn’t matter; she can grab a tub of ice cream from the freezer and eat it with him in one sitting because for the first time her body completely and totally belongs to her. 

She can do what she wants with her hair, and skip Pilates if she would rather spend a day in town, and eat as much chocolate as she pleases and not worry about sprained ankles and sleep monitors and charts and it makes her head spin but she loves it. 

Loves it so much that she lets him push her fast in the cart with squeaky wheels on the linoleum floor of the grocery store and she just lives, and she finds herself being a little less scared than shes been.

She thinks the hardest she laughs that night is when they’re both carrying brown paper bags to his car, jumping over cracks in the ground, and the bottom of his completely gives out, sending the cheese, fresh basil, and tomato paste tumbling onto the damp asphalt in the parking lot not two steps away from the car. 

He looks down at the groceries with the straightest face she’s ever seen him wear before and says: “That’s unfortunate.” in a very monotone voice that makes her lose it in the middle of the Food Basics parking lot. 

He’s a sore sight, standing there in clothes from the rink holding the handles of a brown paper bag with the bottom completely blown out and groceries strewn on the ground below, staring at it all blankly as if he’s indifferent to the whole situation. 

“Sorry to break it to you,” he says, raising his head to look at her, “but you should not be laughing because that right there is your dinner for tomorrow night and now it has ‘eau de cheap grocery store parking lot’ all over it.” he declares, throwing his arms into the air.

She bursts into another round of laughter at that, leaning against him and swaying on her one foot before crouching down to pick up the spoils of war. They’re both dead tired and she can’t help the way she still giggles softly as she transfers the groceries to her bag, holding the bottom securely before she stands up and meets his eyes which are crinkled at the corners and bright. 

“Tessa Jane, let's go home,” he says wrapping one arm around her shoulders and her heart feels so full, she thinks she might float away. She likes it, she thinks before she can stop herself, the idea of a home with the two of them. 

She likes watching his face in the glow of the dashboard, how all the muscles in his jaw relax as he sings softly to some country song she hates. There were certain times she felt like she wanted to run the pad of her thumb over his eyebrows, smooth out the tension in his forehead and along his temples, it makes her happier than it should that she hasn’t felt that way in a while. 

He brings in the groceries and plops them onto the kitchen counter, only rolling his eyes a bit when she immediately reaches for the tub of ice cream and a spoon and hoists herself up into the center island, a smile teasing at the corners of his lips. She has a sweet tooth, sue her. 

He hits a button on her radio with his knuckle before reaching into the grocery bag to lay their purchases over the surface of the counter. 

“Funny you like that thing all the sudden,” she says, gesturing to the radio station with her head, “I thought you said it was old and taking up space.” 

“Oh it is,” he replies, looking over his shoulder at her, hair flopping into his eyes. “I never said otherwise.” he shrugs. He should really get a haircut but she likes the feeling of it between her fingers, so she supposes it can wait. A whole lot of things can just, wait, for a minute she decides. 

He starts singing to some song under his breath as she spoons ice cream into her mouth, her wrists sticky from the sides of the tub, but she doesn’t really care. She knows she should probably help him with the groceries but he looks content, moving with the music and loading fruits and vegetables into her fridge. He spun her in the air every day for twenty one years, she deduces that he’s fine carrying a few groceries. 

“I’ll take it slow but it’s hard to do when you’re lying like me on the line like you.” He starts to sing a bit louder, glancing at her as he closes the fridge door. 

She doesn’t entertain him, smiling into her ice cream and keeping her eyes decidedly down, she supposes she has to make him work for something, they’ve done nothing but work for each other after all.

“You got the hands that I wanna hold,” he sings, putting both his palms on the counter on either side of her, boxing her in, and bringing his nose so close to hers that they’re almost touching. “You light the rooms, the house of my soul,” he murmurs and she can feel his breath on her lips, the denim on his pants rubbing against her bare feet, she doesn’t remember him changing clothes, but she doesn’t remember dropping the spoon into the white tile of her floor either. 

“God damn,” she says with the music, raising her eyes to his and barely concealing a smile, and that does it. Makes his eyes crinkle at the corners and brings on a beaming smile as he lifts her off the counter and sets her down, grabbing both her hands in his and twirling her around once. 

They know how to dance, they’ve both been through twenty one years of learning to dance with each other, but she thinks that anyone watching would bet on the fact that they both have two left feet. They know how to dance but he swings her around and spins them and attempts a barrel roll that she only saves at the last minute and her cheeks hurt from how much she’s smiling.

“My friend, he said you better play it cool, but the first thing I did was to break that rule,” he sings as he pushes her away and pulls her back in, barely keeping her on her toes. She thinks it’s awfully fitting, because not once have they ever played it cool around each other. 

Not at 7 and 9 stealing flowers from the bucket at the fair, at 23 and 25 barely hidden desire, at 28 and 30, adoration all over her face in every interview they do. Everyone always said she was better behaved out of the two of them, but she knows they’re both terrible at listening when they don’t want to.

“Guess I’m a fool, should’ve known better, but there’s pain in my heart and I’m dying to get her,” he belts out, pumping his heart with his fist on the lyrics and making her throw her head back in laughter. 

He pulls her in until they’re the smallest distance apart and looks right into her eyes as he continues singing. “Honey you got the hands that I wanna hold, you light the room, the house of my soul,” he says smiling into her lips, and she honestly thinks, not for the first time, that she wouldn’t mind holding his hand forever.

There’s a moment when they’re cheek to cheek with his hand in hers and her arm curved around his shoulder that she takes in all of it. People like to call them a fairytale, a love story, soulmates, fated in the stars, all the things she used to believe in as a little girl. She grew up thinking her parents were meant to be, and they weren’t, love isn’t simple, she’s learned that lesson time and time again. She thinks though, in that moment, that their hands fit together a bit too perfectly for coincidence and she’ll chide herself later about it, but she starts to believe in the stars again that day. 

She’s loved him since she was a teenager, she’s loved him in every single way she knew how. 

So as he spins himself under her arms and laughs into the shell of her ear, twists her back and forth, and steps on her toes she lets herself love him in the way she’s always wanted to. She doesn’t have to know quite yet, she just wants to feel what it would be like. 

She doesn’t think about it too much if during the last few lyrics when she smiles up at him with shining eyes and tells him he lights the room, the house of her soul, that he touches their noses together and lights up. She swears that if she turned all the lights off he would glow, feels the pulse in his wrist as he mumbles “God damn” with the singer, and kisses her sweetly. 

She doesn’t realize until much later that she told him she loved him that night.

*****

He makes breakfast for her every morning, even though she never asks because she’s used to snacking on apples and bananas and smoothies that don’t require any real cooking. 

But he makes her pancakes, and French toast, and poached eggs that she refuses to admit are better than hers. He wakes her up bare chested with jogging pants slung low on his waist, his hair that has grown out in the recent months messy and falling into his eyes.

Sometimes he carries her down the stairs, a blanket thrown over his shoulder because he knows she hates touching the cold floor in the mornings with bare feet. He carries her and deposits her onto one of the stools by the island, making sure her toes never touch the cold tile even though she could really just put on a pair of socks. 

He cooks for her and carries her, smiling at her tired morning eyes and tugging at the messy bun on top of her head. Dodging her fingers when she pinches his side on mornings he tosses blueberries at her when she can barely keep her eyes open. She arches an eyebrow, saying he’s making a mess in her kitchen grumpily as she stabs a piece of warm dough and forgives him instantly because “how did you make this?”

He thinks she’s funny in the mornings, plants kisses on her cheeks until she lets a small smile show, he never leaves for the day until she smiles at him at least once. 

She doesn’t say it any of those mornings, it’s when she starts to know for sure though.

****

there’s that time they get into a real blow out fight.

Doors slammed, voices raised, fingers pointed on both ends, she doesn’t even remember what it’s about by the end, something stupid probably.

There’s that time they get into a real blow out fight and don’t talk for a two weeks after he walks out. She really doesn’t even know why it happens because they just don’t fight like that…...ever. Not at 11 and 13 watching from the boards as the older couples would stop to yell at each other in the middle of a program, not at 28 and 30 talking through their problems with therapy words and careful sentences. It’s just not like them, but it happens.

Maybe it’s because of how anticlimactic the whole thing is. They fall into bed together and the planet turns all the same, sometimes she feels like she’s taking an easier path, one where they’re together because it’s bound to happen. There’s a million things she wants to try and a whole other world of possibilities, and she’d be lying if she said there weren’t nights when she questioned whether or not she decided for herself or whether she let people choose for her.

Regardless, he leaves and she’ll lay in bed guilty over it months later but under every other emotion she feels that week there’s also a bit of relief.

She calls his mother for “no real reason” as soon as her head stops spinning just to check up on her because Alma has loved her like a daughter since she was seven and “that’s what you do when you love somebody” she reasons with herself through the tears brimming in her eyes, you make sure they’re okay. 

The first two nights alone she noticed how quiet and empty everything in her house seemed. Curled up on the couch with the volume on low and half the lights off, she watched whatever movie was playing on TV. It was only a bit weird when his arm wasn’t draped over her, and his shoulder wasn’t pressed against her own, and there wasn’t popcorn being thrown at her during the sex scenes so that she wouldn’t watch. 

Actually, she thinks, on the third night, it’s not too different, because she can just surround herself with fluffy pillows and it feels just the same. Plus, there isn’t a mess all over her grey couches and there’s no popcorn stuck in her blankets. She’s okay with being alone. 

On night five she reads some erotica novel her sister gave to her midway through the Olympic season because he hasn’t touched her in days and she can physically feel her hair turning grey. She throws it down onto the bed frustrated and riled up three chapters in and thinks about how dumb of an idea it was in the first place. 

_This is so much better than sex with Scott_ she decides later, riding the first wave of real frustration she feels about the entire thing while eating some expensive dessert she had specially delivered to her house on her white comforter. Not that he would care, he hasn’t said a word to her in days.

She doesn’t call him because she’s stubborn, even if her heart hurts every time she sees the hoodie he left over the arm of her couch. She starts to wear it on the sixth day for no particular reason, just because she’s cold. 

She watches their Moulin Rouge Olympic performance for the first time exactly a week after the day he left, and cries the entire time. It’s not her fault if she reaches for him at multiple points during the night, she’s just used to sleeping next to another body that’s warm and holds her close. 

She wakes up to a text on her phone from him the next morning, almost falls off her bed when she sees his name displayed on the screen. She wants to type a million things “please come back” “I miss you” “it’s odd not having you around”, but instead she puts it back down on the table with shaking hands and stares at the ceiling.

She can’t do it if it’s like this. She loves him so much it hurts, loves him the way she always has. Cares about him too much to throw him away if it doesn’t work. She has to make a choice though, because she can live without him in time, years later maybe, but she gets to choose.

It’s an experiment, she decides, folding up his hoodie and placing it on the top shelf of her closet, she just wants to know, a week without Scott. She’s not going to think about him, or call him, or cry over him. She’s always been good at putting things out of her mind, both of her surgery doctors can vouch for it. 

She spends the entire week sans anything Scott Moir. Busies herself with spring cleaning and answering emails, only the ones about her, doesn’t touch the ones addressed to VirtueandMoir. 

She finally unpacks her suitcase for real, after months of travel she feels like she hasn’t had a chance to settle. She finds a disposable camera in the bottom of her luggage, one she knows is full of pictures of them In Japan when he would take her out walking during the day, swinging their joined hands between them. She rolls it into a pair of socks before tucking it into the back of a drawer. 

She gets her nails done, let’s the ladies at the salon scrub the calluses off her toes for the first time In at least ten years and just......doesn’t think about him. 

It’s a little bit weird, acting like he isn't still out there but there’s a part of her that’s glad she can exist without him. She doesn’t want to fall with him because it’s easy, or bound to happen, or fated, she wants to choose him for herself. Choose him because she wants him, not because she feels like he’s her only choice. 

Her sister calls her halfway into her week without Scott, takes her out for lunch at a cafe where she won’t be recognized and buys her a chocolate croissant that makes her think of Paris again. 

She breaks her silence that day, only for a bit. 

“I think I love him.” she says, swirling the foam in her cup, ruining the heart that the barista so carefully shaped. 

“You always have.” Her sister says nonchalantly, using her fork to slice into a piece of strawberry tart. “What’s the issue.”

“We haven’t talked in a week and a half,” she says which earns her a snort from her sister. 

“Tessa, sometimes we don’t talk for weeks at a time when you get into the whole competition spiral,” she laughs, “it’s not exactly uncommon to lose touch after a bit, there were times when you didn’t talk before, I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

“We weren’t-” she starts, and takes a deep breath, staring at a piece of peeling paint on the wall “we weren’t doing what we’re doing now back then.” she says softly.

“Weren’t you though?” Jordan teases, a glint in her eye as the picks up crumbs with the back of her fork, earring herself a glare from her sister. 

“We had a fight,” she continues, picking at the grain in the wood for something to do, her voice low as if she can will it away by whispering it. “And I haven’t seen him much less talked to him, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be though, as long as I don’t think about it I can pretend nothing's changed.” 

“You think you could live without him?”

She pauses a bit, takes a deep breath before saying yes evenly. 

“Are you happy?”

“Enough, I’m sure I could be, after a while.” she replies softly. She misses how much he makes her laugh. 

“Do you want to live without him?” Jordan questions.

The word comes immediately to her lips, she doesn’t even have to think. “No.” She says “Not one bit.” She articulates, biting her lip as she feels a smile start to tease at the corner of her mouth. “Never.”

Things become easier, she gets the photos from the plastic camera developed later that afternoon and sticks them to her fridge. 

She sees him finally a couple of days later at a bar they used to visit together, his coat slung over the back of a chair as he stares up at hockey highlights on one of the screens. 

He looks over at her as soon as she walks in, of course he does, because he’s always been able to find her, no matter where, no matter when. 

He stands up, then sits down, runs a hand through his hair before giving his seat up standing there lost for a second as she makes her way over to him. 

They both stand there for a while, just staring at each other, both of them holding their breath. He has dark circles under his eyes and his cheek feels cold underneath her hand when she brings it up to his face, he keeps avoiding her eyes, looking anywhere but her face and fiddling with the cuffs on his shirt. 

She’s about to speak up when she hears a slow song start to play, something Sam Smith that she can’t quite place, familiar, but not theirs. 

She doesn’t know what makes her do it, maybe the fact that she spent an entire season in his arms to the same soft crooning but she reaches around his neck and tucks her chin into his clavicle, letting a soft breath of air escape her when he wraps both of his arms around her. 

“I thought we were fighting.” He says, mumbled into her hair and so soft she almost misses it. 

“We don’t fight. Remember?” She jokes, closing her eyes and swaying lightly on her feet. “I don’t like fighting with you.” She admits. She supposes they look a bit stupid, holding each other in the middle of a crowded bar and barely moving but she doesn’t care. 

“I don’t like fighting with you either,” he says “but we will, again, probably.” He pauses, waiting for her reaction 

“We will.” She confirms “I’ll throw a vase against the wall,” she giggles, “take the twist ties off all of the bread bags so it all goes stale.” 

“I’ll forget to put the dishes in the dishwasher, let them pile up for days and pretend I don’t see them, then I’ll flip all your pillows upside down so they look messy.” 

“Well now you’ve gone too far Moir” she says matter of factually and it makes him laugh into her hairline. 

“We’re going to do better next time,” he begins “I’m just…..scared”

“I am too.”

“There’s nothing that says we have to stay together anymore,” He speaks carefully and she knows he’s right, they both do, “and it scares me, I freaked out, ran away instead of talking to you. The thought of you not wanting us anymore, of you not wanting to fix us because we don’t need to be whole for anyone now. Even thinking that you feel obligated to me, I want this, if we pursue it, to be something we both choose.”

It makes sense that they’re thinking the same things, they always do.

“I guess we’ll just have to do better for ourselves then.” She says

“I guess” he says as she relaxes into him

Dancing has always been their safe spot, their meeting point, their middle ground, it only seems to make sense that she chooses him while swaying in his arms.

*****

She doesn’t say it at his mother's house on Christmas Eve though. 

The Moirs invite her over that year and she can’t say no, not when he looks at her that way, over his shoulder as he makes dinner on her stove with the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Not as he holds the spoon like a microphone and performs a very bad or very good (depending on how you look at it) rendition of Rihanna’s Umbrella in the middle of her kitchen. 

So she sits on his parents’ couch in their sitting room and absolutely does not think about whether or not it would be confusing for the kids to have two aunt Tessas – even if she was there first. 

After gently wrestling one of his nieces off of his shoulders, he makes his way over to her, hair messy from rolling around on the carpeted floor with elementary school age kids and the biggest smile on his face. Sinking down onto the couch beside her, he pulls her into his side, being careful not to jostle her arm holding the half full mug of hot chocolate. It’s a bit odd; they’ve chosen each other, but they’re not together. No, they’re not. 

It’s a bit odd, looking at his parents mantle above the fireplace and seeing Danny’s wedding picture, then Charlie’s wedding picture, and then a picture of her and Scott at their first Olympics, gold medals on their chests, beaming brightly into the arena lights. It’s a bit odd because they’re all wearing white, except she’s not a bride, and that isn’t their wedding picture. It’s a bit odd because nobody seems to find it odd, the picture, their smiles, the way they sit pressed up against each other on the couch. 

No one blinks twice or finds it odd when the clock strikes twelve and he kisses her hair. 

Nobody has any questions when he tells her he loves her right in front of his entire family. A “Merry Christmas, I love you,” that makes her breath catch in her throat, she has the words on the tip of her tongue, she knows she does. She just…..doesn’t say them. 

He doesn’t seem to expect anything in return though, is content with the way she snuggles into him further, balancing her mug on the top of his thigh. It makes her eyes burn with tears a bit and she has to physically try not to cry.

She’s not going to get emotional on his parents couch, she’s not. 

She’s happy, and he’s happy, and for the moment it’s okay because even though she felt weird about going when he first asked shes had such a good time. 

Making cookies in his parents kitchen from scratch, watching as he measures out flour and egg and sugar and makes it look easy. Laughing when she puts in blue food dye instead of green and all their Christmas trees come out light navy. 

Dusting powder over the dough and rolling pin and teasing him when it ends up on his cheek and in his left eyebrow. Licking white icing off of his pointer finger when his mother leaves to check on the kids and smirking at his raised eyebrow and the sound he makes at the back of his throat as she licks him clean. 

Sitting around his mothers dining table with his entire family, and none of them question her presence. They hugged her warmly when she walked through the door, and passed her another serving of dessert while winking at her and saying holidays are for indulging. All evening it’s like a tiny fire has been burning just below her sternum, if you tried to cut her, she doesn’t think she would be able to bleed, if she did though, it would be gold and bright. 

Bright like his smile as she catches him watching her laugh with his cousins, bright like his eyes that seem to have turned to milk chocolate in the space of a few hours, his laugh like a bell in her ears after a glass of wine or two. Nobody’s counting, it’s Christmas Eve. 

But then it’s eleven fifty nine and they’re scattered across various couches, kids either dead asleep in the next room or buzzed on their last bit of energy. It’s twelve o’ clock and it’s Christmas and he tells her he loves her and nobody blinks twice. 

He tells her he loves her for the second time in one of his best shirts with her in a short dress that ends before her knees, her hair curled and her feet pulled up onto the couch beside her, lipstick rubbed off completely. 

He tells her he loves her in one of those moments where time stands still, where the crackling gas fireplace, and the vanilla tree lights and the television on mute playing a Christmas movie in the background makes his skin look a million different colours. With her mug balanced on his thigh and his arm on her bare shoulder and her tights sporting a rip up one side. 

He tells her he loves her and she wants to say it, wants to say it ten minutes later when they tuck his niece into bed, wants to say it when he walks her to her car and looks once at his parents house before kissing her chastely on the lips and sending her off, not before volunteering to drive her home no less than fifteen times.

Once shes home with the front door locked and the windows closed, she pulls pins out of her hair in her bathroom and focuses her energy into not calling him and begging him to come over. She’s been getting used to waking up with him, falling asleep with no covers because he’s so warm and he never lets go of her during the night. She supposes she’ll have to pull extra blankets down from her closet, it’s been a while since she’s used them. 

It’s when she’s changed into cotton shorts and one of his old t shirts that he knocks on her door, snow falling into his hair and dusting his shoulders. 

“Hi,” he says .

“Hi,” she says back, leaning forwards on the balls of her feet.

He stands in her doorway, hair wet and falling into his eyes, lips bitten red, from what she guesses is being worried between his teeth for the full duration of the twenty minute drive. “I told them I wanted to make sure you got home safely, the roads have been icy and I didn’t want you–" 

He doesn’t finish because she pulls on the collar of his jacket and kisses him in her doorway, snow falling on her eyelashes and making her hands cold.

It’s Christmas and she kisses him on her front porch.

She doesn’t need to pull the blanket down from her closet like she thought she would that night. 

***

There’s the one time he says it for her.

Says it while she’s sitting on the bathroom counter in a bra and loose shorts with her hair curled in twists over one shoulder as she paints her nails red and tries to keep her freshly painted toes from smudging. They’re getting ready for some event and his dress pants are unbuttoned, his black Calvin Klein’s showing, and only a white plain t-shirt covering his chest as he shaves in front of the mirror. 

His hair is swept back from his forehead, the beginnings of what are natural curls fluffy and sweeping over the dark chocolate of his hair. She had run her hands through it with a dab of gel between her fingers as he sat by her vanity earlier, making sure to show him what a “quarter sized” portion looked like, pinching his side when he rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her in the reflection of the mirror. 

She shouldn’t be as distracted as she is, he’s just shaving, but she can’t help but watch his forearms and how the muscles move under his tanned skin. His hands are always on her, it’s not like she hasn’t noticed it’s just extremely evident when she’s at perfect eye level with his arm. 

The same arms that hold her against him and the hands that caress her every curve, fingers tracing the lines of her collarbones and getting tangled in her hair. She knows his body well, better than anyone she decides. Sometimes she watches those videos of children identifying their mothers by touch and she thinks she would be able to feel him from proximity alone. He has his own bit of gravity, something special that keeps their hands never too far away. 

She went clothes shopping for them the other day, picked herself out a loose chiffon dress with an open back and a deep v in the front. Blood red with a slit up one leg and no zipper, it really could just fall of her shoulders if she let it. If the night way goes the way she expects it, to she supposes it will. She bought him a tie to match, as subtle as she could possibly make it, just enough so that they look good in pictures. 

She would put him in velvet and silk though- _if_ he let her, she thinks as she watches him. She saw some sort of trick on instagram to keep her lipstick from smudging off, she decides in that moment that she might try it for tonight.

He shaves the last line of shaving cream away, slotting his razor into the holder, and splashing water over his face. She watches as he turns his face in the mirror checking for missing spots and highlighting the line of his jaw. His face looks nice in the yellow gold glow from the open window, hollowed cheeks and pink lips. She thinks he’s beautiful, told him in the dark while she ghosted her thumb over his brow bone, and she couldn’t see it, but she knows he flushed the most beautiful rose all down his neck. He’s never been good at taking compliments, especially from her. 

She doesn’t notice she’s been painting the same nail for 2 minutes straight, doesn’t realize she’s been painting on her skin more than her nail until he speaks up. 

“Can I borrow your keys?” He asks, shaking her out of her head “I think I might have left my shirt in the back of your car after picking it up from the dry cleaners.” He explains, grabbing a fluffy towel to dab at his face with. 

She nods in response, actually looking down at her nails for the first time in several minutes and realizing her pointer finger looks like an absolute mess. She frowns, she swears she knows how to paint her own nails by now 

He tilts his head at her with a crooked smile on his face “Might want to get some acetone on that, eh? I’ve heard it’s a lot easier when you actually look at the nail you’re painting, but I do like the new style, if it’s what you were going for.” He smiles, folding up the towel and placing it on the counter. 

She rolls her eyes at him, finding her balance on the counter before reaching into the drawer below her to pull out cotton pads and diluted acetone. 

As she sets to work on finding a way to salvage her nail he plants a kiss on her head and says a simple “Love you” before walking out of the bathroom. 

She smiles to herself, he says it more and more often now, says it with such ease and casual tone. 

She likes it a lot. 

His head pops around the frame of the door not a second later and she can see a wide smile on his face. “Also I know you love me too.” He says “you’re not subtle Tess.” He laughs before leaving the room for real. 

She bites her bottom lip to keep her from laughing and shakes her head. He is right though. 

She’s almost certain she really does.

*****

She never liked pet names before him. 

Cringed when her old boyfriends would nip at her ear and call her dear, would twitch her mouth when they wrapped their arms around her shoulder and called her honey or sugar. Despised when they would whisper sweetheart into her hair and make darling her new namesake. 

No. 

She didn’t like it at all before he did it. 

She also didn’t know hearts could actually skip beats but she supposes you learn something new every day. 

They’re lounging in bed one night when he says it, her head across his lap as he brushes through her hair while she does a crossword from the mornings paper. 

“Yellowstone, babe,” he says, “eleven down, the super volcano located under a national park in Wyoming, USA.” 

She freezes, stopping the tapping of the end of her pencil eraser on the surface of the paper. He didn’t, but he did, and it’s then that her heart skips several beats and she really doesn’t even remember breathing. 

“I didn’t mean to–” he starts, desperately trying for some sort of damage control “you can just forget it happened I-" 

She cuts him off, speaking in an even toned voice even though it feels like she’s at the top of a roller coaster; seconds from dropping.

“Can you say it again,” she says, being careful not to reveal too much, pushing herself up so that she’s level with his eyes.

“Baby,” he drawls, eyes drinking her in and she swears she can feel her head floating away. 

“Princess,” he purrs, bringing his thumb to the crease of her lips and running it slowly over top. 

“Mon amour,” he murmurs, tipping her chin up towards him, and that’s the one that gets her.

That’s the one that makes her dizzy and fills her mouth with sage and makes her legs give out when he whispers it into the hollow of her ear on the ice. 

The one that feels thick and heavy when he enunciates the vowel sounds and presses himself against her. 

It’s when he calls her his love, his one, his darling, his only that she feels it like a stream train plowing towards her at full force, no brakes, no stops.

And it hits her hard. 

****

she says it on a Monday night and there’s absolutely nothing special about it at all. 

They’re watching old reruns of shows in the grey room, her knees hanging over his legs and pillows covering her feet because they were cold. Every once in a while she’ll roll left ankle and let her joints crack just to watch his face scrunch up out of habit. He’s had this weird thing about joints cracking since as far back as she can remember.

There’s a massive bowl of popcorn between them, over salted and full of butter simply because she wants it that way and it's nice, not having to justify every little thing she wants to do. 

She likes it a lot.

She isn’t paying attention to what they’re watching too much, but is rather focusing on the rising and falling chest of the boy under her cheek, his hand rubbing circles into her back and his chin resting on top of her head. She loves him. To the depth and breadth and height, and all those other silly ways of saying it. She’s known for longer than she could count, to try to make seconds of it would be ridiculous. 

She doesn’t know why she says it, it just happens, slips out of her lips without warning.

“I love you.” she says, looking up at him “So much, and I know you know, but I just wanted to say it, you don’t have to say it back though, I know too.” She finishes, laying her cheek back on his chest and leaning in closer to him. 

“I love you back, just as much, and i'm saying it just because I wanted to say it too.” He says, a small smile on his face, and that’s it. She laughs a bit, feels her cheeks turn warm when he presses a kiss to the top of her head which is funny because it’s one of the most innocent things that has ever happened between the two of them. 

It isn’t dramatic or big or all encompassing. It just happens. 

It’s the easiest thing she’s ever done.

**Author's Note:**

> You probably didn't notice i was gone but whoops i'm back
> 
> Title taken from the song "Two Punks In Love" by bülow.
> 
> They don't relate to all the lyrics but the singing was so pretty and I couldn't resist.
> 
> Thanks to @bucketofrice for editing the first draft and being my biggest supporter, love u lots❤️
> 
> U can find me on tumblr thru pure guesswork hint: I’m dumb af


End file.
